“O Muhammad, go ahead with whatever you intended—do now what you used to do while Abū Ṭālib was alive. By al-Lāt, (1) no one shall reach you until I am dead.”
At that moment Ibn al-Ghayṭalah cursed the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, so Abū Lahab turned on him and reviled him. Ibn al-Ghayṭalah fled, crying out, “People of Quraysh, Abū ʿUtbah has apostatized!”
Quraysh hurried over and stood before Abū Lahab, who said, “I have not abandoned the religion of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib; I am simply shielding my nephew so that he is not wronged, until he carries on with what he wishes.” They replied, “You have acted well, nobly, and upheld kinship ties.”
For several days thereafter the Messenger of Allah ﷺ would come and go, and no one from Quraysh molested him, because they were in awe of Abū Lahab. Then ʿUqbah ibn Abī Muʿayṭ and Abū Jahl (2) came to Abū Lahab and said, “Ask your nephew where your father has ended up.”
Abū Lahab said, “O Muhammad, where is ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib now?”
He replied, “With his people.”
Abū Lahab went back to them and said, “I asked him; he said: ‘With his people.’” They retorted, “He claims your father is in the Fire!”
Abū Lahab returned and asked, “O Muhammad, will ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib enter the Fire?” The Messenger of Allah ﷺ answered, (3) “Whoever dies in the state in which ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib died will enter the Fire.”
Abū Lahab—may Allah curse him—shouted, “By Allah, I shall remain your enemy forever so long as you allege that ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib is in the Fire!” From that point Abū Lahab and the rest of Quraysh intensified their hostility toward him.
Ibn Isḥāq (5) said: The men who used to harm the Messenger of Allah ﷺ at his very doorstep were Abū Lahab, al-Ḥakam ibn Abī al-ʿĀṣ ibn Umayyah, ʿUqbah ibn Abī Muʿayṭ, ʿAdī ibn al-Ḥamrāʾ, and Ibn al-Aṣdāʾ al-Hudhalī—his neighbors. None of them embraced Islam except al-Ḥakam ibn Abī al-ʿĀṣ.
It has reached me that one of them would throw the womb of a sheep on him while he was praying, or cast it into his pot when it was set up for him. Eventually the Messenger of Allah ﷺ placed a stone behind which he would shield himself when he prayed. Whenever they threw something of that sort, he would lift it on a stick, stand at his doorway, and say, “O sons of ʿAbd Manāf, what kind of protection is this?!”—then he would fling it into the road.
I say: In my estimation, most of what has been transmitted about their throwing the entrails of a camel on his back while he was praying—as narrated by Ibn Masʿūd, which also relates that Fāṭimah came, removed it from him, turned on them and reviled them, and that when the Messenger of Allah ﷺ finished his prayer he invoked curses upon seven of them, as mentioned earlier—along with the report of ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ about their throttling him ﷺ so violently that Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq blocked them, saying, “Would you kill a man simply because he says, ‘My Lord is Allah’?”; and likewise Abū Jahl’s—may Allah curse him—resolve to trample on his neck while he was praying, only to be prevented—all such incidents occurred after the death of Abū Ṭālib, and Allah knows best. Mentioning them here is therefore more fitting and appropriate.